This article defines multi-search and federated search and then describes the different uses of each.
/multi-search
route to perform multi-searches.
Multi-search favors discovery scenarios, where users might not have a clear idea of what they need and searches might have many valid results.
/multi-search
route and specify a non-null value for federation
to perform a federated search.
Federated search favors scenarios where users have a clear idea of what they need and expect a single best top result.
shygirl
in a music streaming application is likely to appreciate seeing separate results for matching artists, albums, and individual tracks.
Federated search is a better approach when the source of the information is not relevant to your users. For example, a person searching for a client’s email in a CRM application is unlikely to care whether this email comes from chat logs, support tickets, or other data sources.